


when i was drowning (that's when i could finally breathe)

by tambuli



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Divorce, Drowning, F/M, Panic Attacks, She's valid, Trans Character, Trans Fjord (Critical Role), veth is horny for fjord
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:20:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26962801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tambuli/pseuds/tambuli
Summary: One day when Veth Brenatto is twenty-two, she looks at her husband and her four-year-old son, and she thinks: this is not the life I want.This would be an interesting story all on its own, I think, but what this story really is about is when Veth Johnson, twenty-three-year-old divorcee, stumbles drunkenly into a drugstore and finds Fjord Tusktooth, bane of her existence, having a panic attack in the “feminine necessities” aisle.And then, a few months later, Fjord Tusktooth saves HER from a panic attack in the school swimming pool.It's a thing.
Relationships: Fjord/Nott | Veth Brenatto
Comments: 16
Kudos: 71





	when i was drowning (that's when i could finally breathe)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grandfatherclock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/gifts).



> So like a year ago, AK and I started shipping Njord, first as a crack ship and then, incredibly, in all seriousness. And she was like, "I want drowning fic in which Fjord teaches Nott how to swim." And I was like "I am on it."
> 
> I was not on it.
> 
> And then a month ago, I said to AK "what if trans fjord njord college fic though" and she was like "write it binch" and I was like "there is literally zero audience for this."
> 
> Well, it's AK's birthday, and I just BET she thought I forgot, but surprise bitch, I didn't!
> 
> Happy birthday, AK Bastardman, I adore you 420/69.

“And then—and then he just looked at me with so much _sorrow_!” Veth rants incoherently to Jester, Beau, and Yasha. Her three girlfriends look at her with varying levels of tipsy/drunk sympathy. They’re in a club, low-lit and hazy; the lights pulse to the beat of the indistinguishably electro-dance-pop-music mashup song that people on the dance floor are grinding to. Veth herself is in a haze of weepy drunkenness. Multiple shot glasses of tequila and lemon slices are beside her.

“And he said, he said, ‘I hope you live a long and happy life.’ Who does that? _Who does that_? I divorced him! The papers were sitting less than three feet away from us! The ink was still wet! And he, he just—” She waves her arms around. “He just! Let me go! As easy as that!”

Yasha blinks. “This is…bad?” she inquires delicately.

“YES!” “NO!” Jester and Veth say simultaneously.

Beau and Yasha blink in unison, the way partners do when they hang out together for too long and pick up each other’s mannerisms. Beau says, “I’m getting mixed signals, you guys.”

“It’s bad because, because—” Jester waves her pink mocktail around. The liquid sloshes out and spatters her smooth blue skin. “They were high school sweethearts! He’s been in love with her since he was ten!” Veth lets out a high-pitched wail and scrubs at her eyes, heedless of the streaks of eyeliner that come away on her hand. “And he just, like, he doesn’t even cry or scream or, or—”

“Oh no, he cried,” Veth says distractedly, and takes Beau’s amaretto sour and drains it. Her friend yowls in protest. “He cried _lots_ when we were discussing custody and stuff.”

Yasha asks, “And it’s good why, Veth?”

“Because, because—” Veth blinks. “He took it so _nice._ Who does that? I mean, it’s going to make it easy for Luc if his parents are amicably divorced, and he took it so nicely, and I know he still loves me, and it’s nice that he didn’t, he didn’t yell or get all toxic macho over it—” Yasha nods in support “—but man, it makes me feel like a shit for divorcing him.”

Beau leans forward, almost tipping over, and takes Veth by the shoulders.

“Veth. Bet-bet. Vethany.”

“That’s not actually my name.”

“Veth,” Beau says, shaking her. “Veth. Dooon’t. Dooon’t feel guilty for. For chasing your dreams and like, going to college and getting your degree and…like…realizing you like…rushed into this marriage. Bro. Sis. Brosis. It happens. It’s chill. It would have been WORSE if you dragged it out. It’s why _irreconcilable differences_ are a thing on the. The divorce multiple choice.”

“Mom said—” And here Veth begins to cry. “Mom said I should have stayed and worked it out, that many marriages can survive one of them going to college or, or, serving in the army, and I was—I was _selfish._ ”

“Your mom, dude, she comes from a generation where women stayed with their husbands because they didn’t have a way out, babe,” Beau says, and Veth says, “Actually my mom is a very accomplished woman.”

“Not the point, Bet-bet. The point. Is. It’s chill. Don’t worry about it.”

“And then my kid will grow up with a broken faaamilyyyyy, and he’s gonna get fuuuucked uppppp,” Veth begins to sob in earnest.

“Dude. Duuuude. Blended families exist and it’s _fine._ Duuuude.” Beau shakes her harder, until Veth can feel her brain juices jiggling too.

“I like your son,” Yasha contributes. “He’s a good kid, with a good mom and dad. I don’t see why he should get fucked up just because his parents are divorced.”

“And if you’re like. Reallyyyy worried about it, Veth, you can always remarry,” Jester says.

“DUDE! She _just_ got out of a marriage she rushed into!” Beau protests, and Veth laughs because she doesn’t want to cry.

“Come on, Veth,” Yasha says, tugging her friend up. Veth stumbles a little in her sky-high heels. They still don’t get her up to Yasha’s height, and Yasha’s just wearing black leather boots. “Let’s go home, get you something to eat. What about super-greasy pizza and fries?”

“I do like super-greasy pizza and fries,” Veth says weepily, and she lets her friend steer her out the club door.

As they emerge to the midnight air, Veth takes a moment to steady herself against the wall and survey her friends. Jester is in her tightest, sparkliest outfit; Beau has on a men’s long-sleeved shirt with like, two buttons buttoned and her sixteen-pack on display; and Yasha is in all black leather. Veth herself is wearing Jester’s frilliest, laciest pink confection of a dress, with smudged black liner, thick mascara, black lipstick, and one of Yasha’s leather biker jackets draped across her form.

They look like they’re all going to different parties but somehow ended up in the same club. It’s hilarious. It’s weird. It makes Veth want to cry. These girls are the first girlfriends she’s ever had, and she’d needed to go to university halfway across the country, disappoint her mother, leave her husband and son, and scandalize all of Felderwin, before she found them.

Jester swears colorfully in Infernal.

Well, Veth can’t really _tell_ what Jester is saying, but she knows the cadence of her roommate’s swearing by now.

“What’s up, Jessie?”

“We’re out of shampoo,” Jester says. “And I just know that when I wake up tomorrow I’m gonna want to shower and scrub all the hairspray out—“ she gestures to the artfully messy, wild curls that actually took thirty minutes to do—“and uggghhh. I want food.”

“There’s a convenience store…over…there somewhere,” Veth says vaguely, gesturing off the street somewhere. “How about. How about you go get takeout and I’ll get the shampoo?”

“I’ll come with you,” Yasha says, frowning. “You’re tiny. And drunk.”

“Thanks, Yasha,” Veth the halfling says dryly.

“What about meeee?” Jester pouts. “I’m tiny too.”

“Not as small as Veth,” Beau points out, “and I’ll be going with you, and I can punch anyone who bothers us.” She nods to emphasize her point.

So Beau and Jester split off from Veth and Yasha, and the latter two stumble—well, Veth stumbles and Yasha guides—off to the convenience store.

Going into the painfully brightly lit convenience store is _hell_ on Veth’s eyeballs, and she swears. Yasha pats her sympathetically. “I’ll get the stuff,” she says, “you sit over there.”

“Good idea,” Veth says. She slumps down into the chair and thinks of nothing at all.

At least, she does, until she moves her head a little and catches sight of a green lump standing at the opening of the “feminine necessities” aisle, visibly shaking.

“Fjord?” she calls out.

The half-orc spins, and yellow eyes widen as he takes her in. “Veth? What are you doing here?”

“It’s a convenience store, dumbass, I can go here if I want,” she fires back automatically, and then looks at him properly. “Shit. You look like shit. Are you okay?”

Fjord Tusktooth is always fucking _frustratingly hot_ , and Veth has always been furious at him for it. Like, literally the day she met him. He turned to say hi to Jester’s new roommate and Veth had, for the first time in her life, the thought: _Oh motherfucking shit balls, he’s **hot**. _

He was and he is and because the gods play favorites, he probably always will be. His green skin invites biting; the cords of his muscles are lithe, not bulging out all over the place; there’s a scar above his upper lip that _immediately_ made her want to lick, and an x-shaped scar intersecting with his eyebrow. He’s tall. Veth could climb him like a tree. There’s a streak of gray in his dark hair and no matter how many times she sees it, it makes her want to scream. What the fuck.

That first day, he’d raised his eyebrows, and said in a delicious cowboy drawl, “Hey, you’re new, aren’t you? I’m Fjord.”

And from that very moment, she’d hated him immediately. What the fuck. Being that hot should be illegal, what the _hell._

“Veth,” she’d bitten out. “Hi.” She’d tried to smile. It came out more like a baring of teeth.

But she digresses, and that’s not the fucking point right now. Fjord Tusktooth at the mouth of the “feminine necessities” is visibly shaking, his face drained of blood. Shit. Are those tears in his eyes? What the hell.

She wobbles closer on her heels, and Fjord has his arms out—to ward her off, to catch her should she fall, she’s not sure.

His yellow eyes go wide as he takes in her entire ensemble—wild curled hair, smeared black lipstick, sweat and glitter all over her. “Wow, you look great.” He smiles, but it’s wobbly around the edges. And—

“The fuck’s up with your voice?” Veth blurts. His cowboy accent’s gone, to be replaced with some weird northwest, almost Tal’doreinian accent.

Fjord flushes dark green. “N-nothing,” he says, and to his credit he does try to make his voice _normal,_ but his voice is shaking.

“You’re shaking. What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing,” he says, and then, “Usually I’d ask Beau to—to—but she, she’s—”

“She’s getting food with Jester,” Veth says, her thoughts thick and syrupy, hazy with the alcohol. She flops a hand at Fjord. “What’s it? The thing she does.”

Fjord looks absolutely miserable, and gestures to the rows upon rows of napkins, tampons, and _Sea Breeze_ care stuff neatly arranged on the shelves. “I need. Stuff.”

“Stuff?” Veth blinks. “But you’re a guy, aren’t you?”

“I _am_!” Fjord says, and it comes out almost a yell. “I am! I always have been!”

“Yes…?” Veth says carefully. “I’m missing something here.”

Fjord waves his arms around miserably. “I just need. Stuff. That’s all. It’s not a big deal.” But he can’t seem to march into the aisle, and his breathing’s coming heavier, and his eyes are wide and keep flitting from her to the sign reading “feminine care” and _basically_ pretty much it’s a textbook case of a panic attack.

Veth is drunk and she’d just cried a few minutes ago, but she isn’t an asshole—well, she is, and very often with Fjord, but not a super asshole. She goes, “Okay, which stuff do you want?”

Fjord gapes at her. “What?”

“Which stuff?” Veth says, slowly, in her _are you a dumbass_ voice. “Or should I get the stuff that I use?”

“Anything, anything at all _please._ ”

“Sure, okay.” She stares at her heels and then growls. “Fine.” She kicks them off—“Hold these,” she commands Fjord, and he stands there like a giant green lump, holding two black stilettos with a dopey, confused look on his face, as she goes barefoot down the aisle and grabs a heavy flow and a light flow package.

“I hate tampons,” she says breezily, as she pads past him on bare feet. The cold floor of the convenience store is actually a relief after hours on heels. “And I was always fucking terrified of toxic shock. At least pads won’t kill you if you forget you’re wearing them.”

“Um…”

“Come _on_ , Yasha’s waiting for me.”

“Yasha? Yasha’s here too?”

“Yes, we went out clubbing, do keep up,” she says, and Fjord makes several large strides to catch up to her. He looms over her like a fucking— _god,_ like a tree or something, and he smells like sweat and hot guy. She hates him so much.

They meet Yasha at the counter, who smiles placidly at them. Fjord seems to freeze up at the sight of her, and Veth has zero idea why, but she dumps all the stuff on the counter and—

Usually she’d make Fjord pay for his stuff, but there’s something zinging at the back of her alcohol-sodden mind, a realization that’s edging at the sides of her consciousness. So instead she digs into her cleavage—Fjord chokes—and pulls out her credit card.

“You coming?” she asks Fjord, as she and Yasha walk to the door. “We live in the same dorm building.”

“I mean—sure. Yes,” he blurts out, and follows. “Veth, you’re still, your shoes.”

“Fuck them,” she says, “my feet _hurt._ ”

“I can…” He seems cautious. “I can carry you?”

“ _Can_ you?” she fires back.

“I will push you in traffic,” Fjord threatens. Veth looks at the empty midnight streets, then very obviously eyes his muscles.

“You couldn’t.”

He laughs, and there’s an edge of desperate relief to it. Why the fuck? Then he grabs her by the waist—she YELPS—and settles her on his shoulders.

“Come on, savior,” he says, softly. As if it’s not meant for Yasha’s ears. “Least I can do.”

And she rides on his shoulders all the way back to the dorm.

***

About a week later, Veth stumbles out the dorm searching for coffee, she all but slams into Fjord coming in from the dewy gray morning.

He’s wearing a muscle top and joggers, soaked in sweat and the musky scent of a man. The cords of muscles, rippling beneath wet green skin, make Veth want to _scream._

“Hey, hey, Veth!” he says, catching her by the shoulders as she almost careens into his chest. “What’s up? Good morning.”

She stares at his stupidly perfect face with the stupidly perfect beads of sweat trailing down it, and says, “Fuck.”

Her hair is a birds’ nest, she’s wearing a huge frumpy yellow nightgown, and she’s sure her breath smells like something died in her mouth. And she runs into Fjord Tusktooth _now_?

“That’s a fine way to sum up a morning,” Fjord agrees, and lets her go. “What are your classes today?”

“Fuck,” she repeats, and then, “Coffee.”

He laughs, and says, “Bye, Veth,” and goes up a floor to where he shares a room with Caleb, Jester’s boyfriend.

“Fuck.”

Veth heads over to the coffee machine, leans her head against it for a moment in agony, before she starts brewing.

Veth had stayed up late devouring her assigned reading for History 1, gobbling up all the information she could get about Exandrian history and the twin moons and the Moonweaver’s connection to Catha but not Ruidus. Then she’d started on her Chemistry 1 notes, looked at all the math and stoichiometry that was required to pass this semester, and as she gazed at the electron configuration she had to memorize, and thought, _this is all I want._

Her phone trills. It’s a clumsy, misspelled text, from Yeza’s number but obviously written by Luc. There’s an included selfie photo of her son grinning at the camera.

 _Miss u momma,_ it says. _Good mornin_

It’s adorable. He’s adorable. Her son is beautiful and perfect and all of _five years old_ , and she ditched him to go to college. She wants to cry.

 _Good morning, my boy! I miss you too <3 _she sends back. And it’s true, but…

Jester stumbles out of their room, bleary-eyed and making grabby hands at the coffee. Veth hands it to her, and she subsequently pours half the sugar jar into it. Caleb appears from the second floor, and his girlfriend all but melts into him, complaining about how it’s soooo earlyyyy. Beau and Yasha come in from outside, wearing matching sportswear and looking completely perfect and refreshed. 

And Veth thinks, _I hate that things happened this way, but I wouldn’t give this up to go back._

She’s still thinking it during finals week, when hell week begins and all the exams and papers crash down onto them. She calls Yeza to tell him that she won’t be able to call Luc this week, and she’s very sorry, and could he tell him?

“But you’re coming home for winter break, right?” he asks, carefully, but she hears the yearning in his voice.

“Of course,” Veth says, surprised. “I miss the boy very much.”

There’s a pained silence.

“It’s just…” He hesitates. “I’d thought you’d want to, maybe, go stay at Jester’s place in Nicodranas or something.”

“I want to see you,” she says, and it isn’t a lie. “Can you put Luc on?”

Her son comes on, and she lets him blabber at her for a while. His happy babble about preschool makes Veth tear up a little. She glances at the stacks of research she ought to be doing for her history paper, and thinks, _you know what, I can do it this afternoon._

She does end up doing it that afternoon, and cursing herself violently all the while. She’s slumped at the common room table, her fingers flying across the keyboard of her laptop, her hair a frantic mess from all the times she’d run her hair through it and then tugged at it in frantic stress.

“…the lost city of Aeor was rediscovered in eight hundred—fuck, eight hundred what? God, where are my notes—”

“Eight hundred thirty-six post-divergence,” Fjord’s voice volunteers, and Veth groans out loud.

“Why are you here,” she mutters into her hand.

Bad enough that she was feeling guilty about her son and her divorce, without seeing Fjord Tusktooth and his unfairly perfect face.

“We live here,” Beau says, a grin in her voice. “Veth, you look like _shit._ ”

Veth looks up to scowl at them, and chokes on her spit. Beau is glowing with health and exercise, as usual. She’s got a bulging bookbag slung casually over her shoulder, and her like, sixteen-pack is showing from beneath her crop top and loose pants. Fjord on the other hand is wearing a giant raincoat, beneath which is a skintight full body swimsuit. He’s got his feet squished in shoes that Veth recognizes as Beau’s, and he’s dripping wet.

“What,” she verbalizes, “the fuck. Fjord, you look—” _edible_ “—like a half-drowned kitten who fell into someone’s laundry basket, what have you been doing?”

“Finals for swim PE,” he says. He scrubs his hand across his face.

“And guess which dumbass,” Beau says with glee, “forgot to bring a change of clothes?”

“This dumbass,” Fjord sighs.

Veth cackles.

“Yeah, hyuk hyuk, laugh it up,” Fjord mutters, but he’s grinning. “Beau’s right though, Veth, you look like shit. History 1 kicking your ass?”

“Yeah,” she mutters. “I didn’t learn _any_ of this shit in high school, I feel like…like I’ve been raised away from civilization like a goblin, or something. And everyone else in the class seems like they know everything the prof is talking about, and I was like, ‘the fuck is an Aeor?’ ”

“Aw, goblin girl,” Fjord says. He bares his tusks. “Like this. Grrrr. RAAAAGH!”

“You look more like an alien than a goblin to me,” Veth informs him archly.

“Whoa,” Fjord says, clapping a hand to his chest as if he’s been genuinely wounded. “That hurt.” He’s grinning. “Lemme change real quick and I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”

Beau winces, and opens her mouth—Fjord bumps into her with his hip. She closes her mouth with a snap.

“Yes,” she says, woodenly. “That should. Definitely be a thing. That you let Fjord do for you, Veth.”

“Well, thank you,” Veth says, confused. Her coffee cup has been empty for hours and she hasn’t gotten up to replenish it yet. “So, eight thirty-six PD, the lost city of Aeor was discovered…”

“I’ll email you my History 1 paper from a couple years ago,” Beau says, walking backwards to her room and doing fingerguns. “It’s fine, you can use it as a reference! And my sources are fucking _immaculate_ , Veth, you’re gonna do so great.”

Veth mutters a thank you, already diving deep down back into her paper.

A couple of minutes later, a steaming cup of coffee clunks down beside her. She looks up to see freshly showered Fjord, grinning at her, his tusks glinting in the light a little bit. There’s a very little bit of stubble on his perfect green face. She hates him _so much._

“Cheers,” he says. Veth raises the cup to her lips. “Cheers,” she echoes.

And then _chokes_ on the sludge he gave her.

“What the FUCK?!” she shrieks, coughing and spluttering. A stray coffee droplet lands on her laptop screen. “Fjord? What the hell? What is this?”

“It’s my…super duper hellweek coffee special,” Fjord says, grinning, but he also looks a little…concerned, a little bit…like he wants her to like it, maybe? God she hates him _so much._ “Guaranteed to keep you up until the paper is finished, and to make your brain zoom zoom zoom connecting the dots.”

Veth gags. “This killed me. This actually killed me.” She imitates a ghost, “Fjooooordddd. Whyyy did you kill meeee?”

“Nooooo!” Fjord plays along, dramatically, clutching at his chest. “Nooo! Veth! Come back! Take my spurs but not my goblin girl!”

Veth clunks her head down on her laptop keyboard and laughs till she cries.

***

Winter break comes and goes, and the new semester starts in January, and Veth stares at the signup for PE classes and feels almost physically sick.

Swimming PE. _Water_ PE. The only available class that would fit into her schedule.

The river closing over her head, the burning in her lungs as she struggles not to breathe river water. Her son is safe in the boat floating away from her, she tries to comfort herself, but she’s a person before she’s a mother, and she wants to live too. She can’t go to her waterlogged death happy and at peace as long as her boy is alive—she wants to live, she wants to live, _I want to live!_ she wants to yell, but that would use up valuable air.

She remembers all too clearly the encroaching blackness, the fire in her chest, how she kicked wildly and splashed around with her arms, but she was too deep in, she couldn’t push herself out—she tries to make herself go limp, to float, but she’s panicking, no she can’t breathe, it would be water if she breathed now, but her lungs aren’t getting the memo and she needs air air air she needs to _breathe_ she wants to **_live_** —

“Don’t be a fucking _baby_ ,” she growls to herself, and takes the class with a click of her mouse.

Except a few weeks later, she’s facing the prospect of going to PE class and going _into_ water for the first time since she almost died in it. It’s just, all around horrible, as she informs her roommate.

Jester comes over to Veth’s side of the room and hugs her. “Aw, Veth,” she says, and pokes her with her horns. “Why don’t you ask Fjord to help you? He’s trying out for swim varsity next year, did you know?”

“I didn’t,” Veth says. “Because I don’t actually care what Fjord Tusktooth does with his life.”

“Veth!” Jester giggles. “I know he’s your friend too, you don’t have to pretend.”

“Never,” Veth swears, and then giggles. “He’s an annoying bastard man, that’s what he is.”

Jester pokes her. “Well, he’s an annoying bastard man who can swim,” she says logically. “And you trust him at least a little bit. So you should ask him to help you with like, exposure therapy! Or drop the class. You should maybe drop the class actually.”

“I am _not_ running away from this,” Veth says.

“That’s you all over,” Jester agrees. “Veth the Brave.”

So during their back-to-school dinner, as everyone chatters blithely and catches up, Veth sidles over to Fjord and says, “Hey. Fjord. Can I ask a favor?”

“I don’t know, _can_ you?”

“Are you a sports science major or a grammar teacher?”

Fjord bites his lip. “I used to be a divinity major, actually. But what’s up?”

“I need…” Veth takes a deep shuddering breath. “I need. To. Swim PE.”

“You don’t know how to swim?”

“I know how!” she says, immediately defensive. Fjord holds his hands up in a placating motion. “Sorry. Yeah. But me and water…we’re not on the best terms. So. Seeing as how _we’re friends_ and I _trust you_ , can you please help me with,” she faux-gags, “exposure therapy?”

“We’re friends and you trust me? Say that again,” Fjord says, grinning. She jabs him with an elbow.

“But of course I’ll help you,” Fjord says. “How about…” He seems to steel his resolve. “How about tomorrow, 6am at the pool?”

Veth groans at the early time, but agrees all the same.

The next day, at the asscrack of dawn, Veth tiptoes through her morning ablutions, trying not to wake Jester up. For some godforsaken reason, she lingers over the bikini set she’d somehow, dumbly, brought to school with her, before burying it deep into her closet and pulling out a much more sensible one-piece instead.

“Fuck,” she mutters, as she wriggles into it. “My _tits._ Fuck.”

But there’s nothing for it, it’s either the very slightly too small around the chest one-piece or the bikini, and she’s _not,_ she is _not,_ wearing a bikini for Fjord Tusktooth. She has her fucking pride. She tosses a big white t-shirt over the entire ensemble, puts pants on, and goes to the pool.

Fjord’s already there, floating in the pool. He’s wearing a similar white coverup shirt and swim shorts. He looks up at her and grins. “Hey, Veth. Mornin’.”

“Morning,” she echoes, but. The expanse of water. The rippling of the pool. _It’s not the river,_ she comforts herself, _this is the school pool, there are steps, and Fjord is here, it will be FINE._ But she looks out at the pool and all she can see is water water water—

The strain of her shoulders, heaving her son up to the boat, praying Yeza or someone would miss them, the weakening of her muscles as the water encroached…

“Veth! Veth!”

She snaps out of the flashback, and only dimly realizes she’s panting in terror. Fjord has lunged up from the water, and is holding her by the shoulders. “Veth what the fuck? If you’re that scared of water, why did you even sign up for the class?”

She tilts her chin up and meets his eyes. Depthless yellow. Like…like a lemon or something. “I’m not afraid of _any_ fucking thing.”

Fjord grins at her, but the grin has an edge of concern. His tusks are sharp and beautiful as he says, “Yeah, I know.”

He starts her off easy, at the shallow end of the pool, doing little kicks as she holds on to the edge like she’s five. Like she’s Luc. He bobs beside her all the while, careful and protective, and she starts to feel like _shit this might actually work._

And then he says, “Okay, time to blow bubbles.”

“Bubbles?” she echoes, feeling cold.

“Duck your head under the water and blow bubbles with your nose. Like snorting out,” Fjord says.

“Duck _under_? No th—” Veth almost says, and then, _Veth the Brave, not afraid of any fucking thing. Not even goddamn water._ So she plunges her head in and blows as violently as she can.

“Veth! Veth! Veth!” Fjord says, and she can hear him, hear him through water, hazy and distant. “Not like that, you’ll run out of air too fast. You’ll drown.”

“So what’s new,” she mutters, surfacing.

Fjord blinks at her, concern seeping over his features, and she’s like, _holy shit, time to misdirect._

“So, Fjord,” she says, as mockingly casually as she can, “what’s up with the shirt? Don’t want to show off your rippling abs?”

“Rippling—” Fjord’s mouth opens and closes like a fish, before a grin spreads across his face. “You think I have rippling abs?”

“I think you _wish_ you had rippling abs,” Veth fires back. “Beau is way stronger and ripped-er than you. _You_ are a little cherub boy.”

“Well, yeah,” Fjord says, but for some odd reason his grin widens, and there’s an edge of…joy, of wonder. “She’s Beau.”

“Fair.”

“Tell you what,” Fjord says, grinning. “I’ll take off my shirt if you take off yours.”

Oh that little shit. He said it to _dare_ her. As if he thought she wouldn’t do it and therefore he’d _win._ She’d show him. She whips off her shirt and lets her tits bounce out.

Smugness spreads through her as Fjord’s eyes bug out. Those yellow eyes devour her (fucking _magnificent_ ) tits, before jerking up to her eyes guilty.

“Yeah, I thought I was gonna have to remind you that my eyes are up here,” she says smugly. “Well? Deal’s a deal. Pay up, Fjord. Shirt off.”

It’s in that moment that she sees Fjord freeze up again. As if the thought of taking his shirt off in front of her brings him actual, genuine terror, instead of just insecurity.

“Or not,” she says, backtracking. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to—”

“No,” he interrupts, “this is something I want to show you.”

He takes a deep breath and takes off his shirt, letting it float away in the water.

Veth’s first thought is, _oh motherfucking shit balls he’s even hotter shirtless._

He’s not like, Beau levels of ripped—that girl has like, a sixteen-pack or something, more abs than Veth even knew existed, but. He’s a swimmer, his core strength is probably crazy, and it’s borne out in his unfairly defined v-line and his abs and his pecs and—

Oh. Wait.

She floats closer without meaning to, and her hands reach out to brush—Fjord flinches.

“Shit, sorry, sorry!”

“No, no, it’s—” Fjord takes a deep breath, and guides her brown fingers to trace across the darker green scars beneath his pecs.

Which she does, but then she gets sidetracked and wants to touch his nipples, which are an even darker green than his scars, and are _much_ more interesting, and she kind of wants to bite them, and then she’s jerking away and Fjord is flinching again, curling in on himself.

“Are you…angry?” he asks.

“ _Angry?_ ” Veth parrots, confused. “What?”

“That I’m—” He waves his hands to encompass all of _him_.

“What, that you’re basically the hottest guy I’ve ever met and it’s the worst, and the gods definitely play favorites?” Veth says, playing indignant. Well, she means it, but also—there’s the fear in Fjord’s eyes, and the tentative way _he_ holds _him_ self, and she’s an asshole woman but she’s not a bigoted asshole, thanks very much.

“You think I’m hot?”

“Ass,” Veth says, smacking him. “Now I know you’re just fishing for compliments, and I want you to know, it’s very unbecoming.”

The force of her smack carries her closer to him, and before she realizes it they’re skin to skin, and she looks up at him and he looks down at her and then holy shit they’re _kissing._

The wet slide of lips on lips, the slight chlorinated taste of the water—she slides her fingers through his hair and _pulls_ , and his response is a delicious yelp. His tusks are a new and interesting thing to navigate around, and she’s just about to attempt it when he jerks and thrusts her away.

“Veth, what the _fuck_ , I’m so sorry, you’re married—”

“I’m not,” she says, like an idiot, reaching for him. Fjord pushes backward,, the spray hitting her face.

“You’re…Nott?” he asks dumbly.

“No! I’m not married!”

“ _What_?”

“I got divorced in _October_ , you ass.”

“You—October—but—”

“Keep up, Fjord!”

“You mean, I could have asked you out in _October?!”_

“You _wanted_ to ask me out?” Veth fires back, and then her eyes go wide. “You wanted to ask me out?”

“I wanted to ask you out since _last year_ , Veth—I don’t know your last name—literally the day I handed you your kung pao—but boundaries EXIST!”

“Fair,” Veth acknowledges, and then, “but I’m not married _now_ , so will you get over here and kiss me already, you stupid bastard man?”

Fjord grins wide-so-wide, and does just that.

***

“You know, I know you made me take off my shirt to distract me from teaching you.”

“Shut the FUCK up or you can’t touch my boobs.”

“I’m just _saying_. You do need to learn how to swim.”

“As long as you’re ready to give me CPR after.”

“That is literally not how CPR works— _mmmph_.”


End file.
